Forms and trasmission of Knowledge at Saint Gall (Ninth to Eleventh Century)

The paper focuses on the forms of transmission of knowledge within the monastic elite who controlled the monastery of Saint-Gall from the Carolingian age to the Salian age. The chronicles of Saint-Gall contain evidence that offfer insight into the ways in which this elite created a shared cultural humus, through a process of ‘horizontal learning’ not strictly connected with the school, but which was based on the personal solidarity deriving from relationships. The mixture of the formal plane with the informal characterised the training processes of the monastic community, in which the transfer of competences and the training of the monks occurred both within the formalized scholastic structures and in an informal manner. In this way, the monastery and the school could overlap, and even become interchangeable.